


Chasing the Sun

by shadownashira



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Families of Choice, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Missions Gone Wrong, Platonic Cuddling, Poisoning, Post-Canon, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-10
Updated: 2015-10-10
Packaged: 2018-04-24 13:02:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4920658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadownashira/pseuds/shadownashira
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Friendship within Kingsman is caring about one another, both during and outside missions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chasing the Sun

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lynndyre](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lynndyre/gifts).



He must have triggered some sort of security mechanism, because several moments after stepping into the small server room where all the information Kingsman is searching for is stored, the steel door slides shut of its own accord and refuses to budge.

"Merlin?"

'I'm working on it,' says his handler over the comms. 'What the bloody fuck?'

Nothing good ever happens when the tech wizard starts swearing during a mission. Eggsy automatically scans the room, but it's a fairly small space filled with nothing but rows of computer servers, and a quick walk around reveals nothing overtly threatening. He looks up, examining the single air vent in the middle of the ceiling. 

Before he can ask about the vent as a possible exit route, the Scotsman cuts him off. 'No, it's too small for you to crawl through and it's part of the problem right now. Get down on the floor, Galahad, as close to the door as possible.'

"Wot?" Despite his confusion, Eggsy follows Merlin's instruction and folds his body down into a crouch by the door. 

A moment later, an ominous hissing noise starts issuing from the air vent, sounding like air leaking from a tire, though whatever is being expelled is colourless. "Bruv, I'm guessing that's not good?"

'Carbon monoxide.' The distant sound of frantic typing carries over the comms. 'These fucking firewalls – '

Unbidden, his thoughts flash to news reports about people dying of carbon monoxide poisoning in their cars. "Door an' walls too thick to blast through, ain't they?"

'Walls nearly half a metre thick, the door not much thinner. In the space you're working with, you're likely to blow yourself up anyway.' The comm mutes for several moments as Merlin presumably checks in with Roxy, who's in a different part of the building. 'I've redirected Lancelot to your position. It seems like the door can be opened from the outside, but she's moving down from the rooftop.'

Eggsy had taken half an hour just to sneak past all the guards from the roof down to the basement where he is now, and he doesn't think he has that long. The poisonous gas is being released far too quickly, the hissing displacement of air getting on his nerves. 

'Galahad,' Merlin's voice is grim and apologetic. 'I'm running the hacking programme right now, but it needs more time.'

"Oi, six minutes, remember?" Kingsman has tested his ability to continue working even without air, and he averages around two minutes if actively moving, six minutes at rest.

'Good lad. Signal if you need to communicate, but otherwise stay still. _Now_ , Galahad.'

Lying down on his back to put less strain on his body, he closes his eyes, breathes in a deep lungful of air and holds it. He doesn't bother to count the seconds ticking past, instead concentrating on regulating his heartrate and willing his body to relax. His world narrows down to the air vent still spewing out carbon monoxide and the pounding of his heart in his chest.

'You're doing well, Eggsy,' Merlin murmurs quietly into his ear once, but otherwise there is only an unpromising silence from him as time passes.

Eventually, his lungs start protesting. He distracts himself with wondering if Merlin has spilled yet another cup of coffee, and plots to make a detour back to a desk where he had earlier spotted a shiny black mug with a wicked dragon print.

Finally, the demand to release all the built-up carbon dioxide and get more oxygen becomes too much and he exhales a huge rush of air and inhales just as quickly. Almost immediately, an itch starts deep in his chest and he has to suppress the urge to cough. 

It goes downhill from there, a faint sensation of pain spreading through his abdomen and a dull ache starting up in his head. Holding his breath becomes impossibly difficult and he has to take tiny breaths of air every now and then, and that just intensifies his headache and the nausea creeping up his throat. 

'Galahad, are you with me?' Merlin asks sharply. His eyes snap open, a white haze from the fluorescent lights distorting his vision. He manages to raise a hand to his glasses and tap his fingers against the frame twice in acknowledgement.

'The hack will go through in about thirty seconds, and the door will open after that. There are guards moving down towards the basement. I've unlocked the room next to you and you need to leave, get into that room and wait until Lancelot can reach you. Can you do that?'

He taps twice again and rolls over slowly onto his knees, feeling like his body weighs a ton. He slips his gun into his hand, and the familiar grip helps to ground him. It's getting harder to focus; he's not even aware that he's breathing normally now.

The electronic beep of the door unlocking has never sounded sweeter. He sweeps his gun up as the door opens. The corridor outside is clear, though somewhere nearby there are gunshots going off, some of them the distinct soft pop of a Kingsman-issued pistol.

Eggsy pushes himself up to his feet and manages two shaky steps out into the corridor before the motion sends a dizzying wave of nausea through him. Staggering down to his hands and knees, he spends a long minute dry-heaving onto the floor. Afterwards, he collapses onto his side, panting. Blinking rapidly does nothing to clear his swimming vision, so he closes them instead. 

'Galahad, focus on me,' a voice says urgently. That's Merlin's voice, Merlin is important, listen to Merlin. 'You need to find cover, there's a hostile approaching – '

The rest of the words fade out into a buzz, and it's only when swift footfalls and Merlin's panicked tone filter through his brain that he realises he must have blacked out.

'Lancelot, Galahad is down and he's a sitting duck, you need to move faster!'

Eyes still closed, he struggles to think. He's at a corner with two possible directions anyone can approach in, and a single set of running footsteps is coming from each path. One is Roxy and one is a hostile, but Rox is going to have to turn the corner where Eggsy is now to get a clear shot at the enemy. Eggsy is going to get killed by then.

Mustering all of his strength, he swings his right arm up over his head and fires off three shots blindly from where he's still lying on the floor.

A stranger's pained shout cuts off abruptly after his third bullet and a body thuds dully onto the floor.

"Bloody hell, Eggsy," Roxy swears over his head as she reaches him. "What if that had been me?"

"Y' don't run like a herd of elephants," Eggsy slurs, not resisting when he's turned over onto his back. He opens his eyes slowly and squints until the blurry shape leaning over him resolves into Roxy's worried face. His limbs refuse to cooperate when he tries to get up.

'Lancelot, get Galahad to the extraction point, I've dispatched a medical team.'

"You better not throw up on me," Roxy warns.

"No promises, Rox," he mumbles. His own voice sounds like it's coming from a faraway place. His headache is fading a little now that he's no longer breathing a toxic gas into his lungs, but exhaustion is settling deep into his bones and he can only flop limply when Roxy hoists him over her shoulders and starts walking. They must be a sight to behold, a petite lady like Roxy carrying him around. His best friend is a badass.

"Unwin, I'm going to have to carry you up six flights of stairs, you owe me a favour for this."

Eggsy ignores her. "Merlin?"

The Scot's voice is low and intense. 'What is it, lad? How are you feeling?'

"Like shit, but what's new? Remind me to tell you 'bout what happened in Toronto."

Roxy stops abruptly, outraged. 

'Toronto?' He can imagine Merlin's narrow-eyed, suspicious look, and that mental image makes him grin fondly. 'That was a standard joint surveillance mission for you and Lancelot. Nothing of interest occurred there.'

"You're absolutely right, nothing happened in Toronto," Roxy cuts in hurriedly. "Eggsy, you little rat, I get it, keep your mouth shut."

Merlin sounds disbelieving but lets it go for now. 'Keep moving, Lancelot. Check in when you get to the roof.'

Eggsy waits until their handler has switched the comms to passive monitoring, then jabs Roxy weakly in the side.

"What?"

"Can we stop off on the third floor? There's a really cool mug I wanna bring back."

************

Three days stuck in medical where high concentrations of oxygen were filtered into one of their specialised treatment rooms was bad enough, but the week of enforced house rest combined with the anniversary of V-Day makes it hellish. The radio, newspaper and television are filled with tributes to all the victims during the almost-apocalypse a year ago. Since no one had ever publicly claimed credit for stopping V-Day, the usual slew of speculation and conspiracy theories are trotted out, all the information and evidence about Valentine's misdeeds that Merlin had covertly released being rehashed all over again.

The atmosphere of grief everywhere is almost palpable and he's not immune to it. Eggsy would much rather not dwell on V-Day, though on a personal front he had been lucky – the only person he had lost on that day had been Harry, though Jamal had been touch-and-go for a while in the hospital. 

It's a Sunday on the actual day of the anniversary, and he whiles away time watching cartoons with Daisy and chatting with his mum about her new job at a florist's. If she randomly picks Daisy up to cuddle her throughout the day, red-eyed, and if Eggsy chokes up a little when she hugs him, well, that's just between the three of them, innit?

After dinner, he walks home with JB to his townhouse several streets away. Separate living accommodations right from the beginning had been a great idea in retrospect, because he's lost count of the number of the times he's gone home in the wee hours of the morning, bruised and limping from a mission. He suspects he's going to have to read his mum into Kingsman eventually judging from the dubious looks whenever he uses the 'emergency fitting' excuse.

Distracted thinking about the organisation's policy for immediate family members of Kingsman agents, Eggsy very nearly shoots the man sitting on his doorstep, half-hidden by the waning daylight.

"What the fuck?"

Percival lifts his head and blinks at him with weary eyes. 

His fellow knight is dressed not in a suit, but a sweater and slacks without the Kingsman glasses. A year ago, he would be having conniptions at seeing him dressed so casually, but that had been before he had gotten smashing drunk one night and woke up in Percival's guest bedroom with the hangover from hell. Needless to say, some barriers had been broken that morning when the other man had watched him throw up before patiently offering water, painkillers and a hot towel, and afterwards when Eggsy had witnessed Percival wearing penguin slippers.

JB trots up to Percival to sniff curiously and the other man starts petting him almost on autopilot. Eggsy does a scan of his surroundings, checks his phone for any alerts and finds nothing amiss.

"Do I need to run in and put on my kit?"

Some semblance of awareness finally stirs in Percival's eyes as he straightens and that just makes Eggsy worry more, that the other agent has been sitting out here in the open, lost somewhere in his own head.

"No, I apologise if I worried you," he says. He's holding himself stiffly and petting JB with only his left hand. "I merely needed to see a friendly face. The medical staff mean well, but it's not a good day for me to spend alone or amongst strangers." 

Eggsy takes a moment to parse through that bit of information and gets it. 

Percival had been in a restaurant when the V-Day signal had gone out, and had killed nearly two dozen civilians before a truck had rammed through the walls and caused the building to collapse. The agent had spent forty-eight hours trapped under rubble, feverish and surrounded by dead bodies before Merlin had been able to trace his location and coordinate the resources to dig him out. What it means is that it had taken more than six months before Kingsman's psych department had cleared Percival for field duty again, he never gets assigned to a mission which may require being stuck in small spaces for any amount of time, and he always has a partner for missions lasting more than three days.

Roxy is somewhere in Madrid assassinating someone, which explains why Percival is here on his doorstep instead. 

"Mate, c'mon, let's get you inside. JB, up." He unlocks the door, unclips JB's leash to let the pug enter first and helps Percival up. "What happened to your arm?"

"Fell out of a moving car and wrenched my shoulder rather badly, I'm afraid."

Inside, Eggsy nods to the living room. "Have a seat anywhere. Gonna go change, be right back."

Upstairs in his bedroom, he dials Merlin's number and places it on loudspeaker as he strips out of his shirt stained with Daisy-sized chocolate handprints. The call picks up after two rings.

'Eggsy?'

"Lost an agent somewhere, bruv?"

There's silence for a moment before Merlin breathes a sigh of relief. 'He's with you, then. Medical is throwing a fit about Percival discharging himself.'

"Surprised you didn't already track him down, t' be honest."

'He texted me before leaving his phone and glasses in medical. I could have traced him, but considering the circumstances I decided to let him have his privacy. I was going to check in with you or the Mortons if I hadn't heard anything by midnight.'

Eggsy nods to himself, pulling on a comfortable black shirt and digging further into the cupboard for his spare set of blankets. "I would 'ave bet on Roxy's dad. Ain't they best mates?"

'The Mortons don't know what really happened a year ago and that makes all the difference, lad.' Merlin sounds tired, and Eggsy remembers that while he had known Harry for four months, Merlin had been his friend for almost three decades.

"You doin' okay, Merlin?"

Merlin doesn't even bother to pretend not to know what he's talking about. 'Harry was the second agent we lost in the past two years whom I considered a friend. I miss James, and I miss Harry, but life goes on, I suppose. They would both be giving me so much shit if they saw me brooding over them.'

"That's just human," he points out.

'Yes, yes it is.' Merlin sighs. 'Go to Percival, Eggsy, he needs a friend right now. I'll be fine, I need to untangle this messy coding and it's going to take me five hours at the minimum.'

Work is Merlin's coping mechanism of choice. In the first month after V-Day, Eggsy and Roxy had had to drug the man's coffee to get him to rest and take a break from obsessively trying to glue Kingsman back together. It's better now that Tristan has been promoted to Arthur, some of the burden lifted from his shoulders, but on a day like this it's unlikely that Merlin will let himself slow down. Eggsy throws the blankets over one shoulder and picks up his phone to compose a text to Roxy, planning another intervention.

'One last thing, Eggsy.'

"Yeah?" he replies absently.

'Harry always had the tendency to speak harshly. I've lost count of the number of times he's apologised to me after letting his temper get the better of him. He would have regretted his words to you that day, I guarantee it. You've proven yourself over and over to be an outstanding agent and a very good man. I say this again, Eggsy, Harry would have been proud of you. _I_ am proud of you.'

Thrown off guard, Eggsy stares down at the phone in his hand. The tight, unhappy knot in his chest he's been carrying around all day finally eases, replaced by a glowing warmth. 

"Thanks, Merlin. 'ave I told you lately you're the best?"

'You did actually just yesterday, but it's good to have it confirmed. Goodnight, lad.'

Downstairs, Percival is settled on the sofa, JB curled at his feet. His eyes are a little less haunted than they were before. "Merlin wasn't too worried, was he?"

"He was okay, but you should probably check in with him in the morning, you know how he's a mother hen when one of us gets injured." 

"He's not the only one." Percival smiles wryly as Eggsy tucks the blanket around his shoulders. "Would you mind terribly if I asked you to sit with me a while?"

"Not at all." He circles around to Percival's left and sprawls against his side. The other agent adjusts the blanket until it's covering both of them. Eggsy doesn't even suggest the guest bedroom upstairs; it's going to be way too confining for Percival right now. "I think we can call this what it is, bruv."

"And what is that?" Percival asks, sounding drowsy already, his arm wrapped comfortably around him.

Eggsy yawns and shifts until his head is resting more securely on the other man's shoulder. "This a cuddle, innit?"

Percival huffs a laugh. "Go to sleep, Eggsy."


End file.
